Fellows
Fellows in Residence
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Dance
Sasha Ivanochko
Choreographer — Canada
A choreographer, educator, and arts leader, Sasha Ivanochko has shaped Canadian contemporary dance for over 30 years. Her critically acclaimed work has toured internationally, and her contributions to the field have been recognized with numerous awards. Most recently, she was appointed to the 100th Class of Guggenheim Fellows. Sasha is also studying in psychotherapy, and her creative themes often incorporate intersecting interests in art and mental health and wellness.
“Ritual: An Ancestral Conversation” examines the encoded rituals of Sasha's Canadian Ukrainian heritage, developing a contemporary choreography that embodies these forms as a dance of resistance to cultural erasure. During her residency, Sasha will refine a movement vocabulary that weaves traditional and contemporary forms, investigating how ritual shapes identity and practice. This process deepens her engagement with cultural transmission in performance.
Film/Video
Robert Epstein
Filmmaker, Director, and Author — United States
Rob Epstein was a full professor at California College of the Arts for twenty years, where he co-founded the MFA Film Program, served as co-chair of the Film Program, and is now professor emeritus. He has also been a visiting professor in the Graduate Film Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the Sundance Institute and BAMPFA, as well as three terms on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences representing the Documentary Branch. Rob was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts. Over the years, Rob and collaborator Jeffrey Friedman have amassed hundreds of hours of archival material: pre-interviews, outtakes, and other never-before-seen footage. Together, these materials constitute a significant historical record, tracing the evolution of LGBTQ+ identities from the 1970s to the present. They document pivotal events, including the election and assassination of Harvey Milk and the AIDS epidemic—moments that galvanized the queer community and shaped its identity. Among the videotaped pre-interviews are many individuals from the so-called “lost generation”—the cohort of gay men decimated by AIDS who would have been mentors to today’s young queer generation.
During their residency at the Bogliasco Center, Rob and Jeffrey will begin developing a long-simmering idea: a film or installation project that revisits and reimagines our archival collection, titled Outtakes.
Film/Video
Jeffrey Friedman
Filmmaker, Director, and Author — United States
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have been making movies together for over 35 years. Their first film, Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt, won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. This was Rob’s second Oscar, having won previously for The Times of Harvey Milk. Both films were chosen for the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, as was Rob’s previous film Word Is Out. Rob and Jeffrey have had career retrospectives at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Film at Lincoln Center in New York, the Taipei International Film Festival in Taiwan, the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal, and the Pink Apple Film Festival in Zurich. They are members of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They co-authored the textbook The Art of Nonfiction Movie Making. Jeffrey has had a distinguished career editing his own and other people’s films, including two Oscar-nominated shorts and one Oscar-winning feature. He has taught in the documentary graduate program at Stanford University.
During their residency at the Bogliasco Center, Jeffrey and Rob will begin developing a long-simmering idea: a film or installation project that revisits and reimagines their archival collection, titled Outtakes.
Upcoming Fellows
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Dance
Matty Davis
Choreographer — United States
Matty Davis is an artist engaged in embodied explorations of the tension between fragility and fortitude. His work uses choreography as an instrument to activate high-stakes relationships concerning some of the most important aspects of our lives: trust, risk, responsibility… His performances have been described as “balancing ecstatically on the edge of life and death” (Jesse Zaritt). Matty's work has been presented by High Line Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Palais de Tokyo, among many others. He currently teaches at Columbia University.
While at Bogliasco, Matty Davis will be working on a new project that involves a “performance arranged for print”—a new form that he has been trailblazing since 2021—as well as a related live work. These interconnected works involve and hinge on mathematical form that blurs inner and outer surfaces: the Möbius strip. Ultimately, Matty aims to explore the pursuit of human ideals and what can happen both inside and outside us as bodies in the face and pursuit of our highest aims.
Film/Video
Sierra Pettengill
Filmmaker — United States
Sierra Pettengill is a filmmaker from Brooklyn whose heavily archival-focused work focuses on the warped narratives of American history. Her films have screened at MoMA, Lincoln Center, the Sundance and Locarno Film Festivals, on the Criterion Channel, and in festivals and venues around the world. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow, and is a board member of the cinema nonprofit, Screen Slate. Her most recent film was RIOTSVILLE, USA, released by Magnolia Pictures.
Sierra's project is an archival nonfiction film about the dark spectacle of the United States’ 1975 Bicentennial. Amidst the collapse of its industrial economy, its defeat in the Vietnam War, and the impeachment of its president, it was under a cloud of malaise that the country threw itself a massive birthday party. On the surface, its parades and brand deals may have been projecting “patriotic extravaganza;” beneath, it was as fraught and diseased as the nation itself. But this mix of pageantry and anxiety, irony and earnestness makes the Bicentennial a revealing snapshot of the stories America tries—increasingly hollowly—to tell itself. By peering into the gap between lived realities and fairytale patriotism that the Bicentennial presents, we can get a rich understanding of the US’ libidinal economy, examining the desires, drives, and delusions that define a nation trapped in an endless cycle of what Antonio Gramsci would call its “morbid symptoms.”
History
Sebastián Carassai
Author and Professor of History — Argentina/Italy
Sebastián Carassai is a historian, a professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, a member of the Center for Intellectual History at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, and a researcher at CONICET. He is the author of the books The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies (Duke University Press); Lo que no sabemos de Malvinas: Las islas, su gente y nosotros antes de la guerra (Siglo XXI); and, together with Kevin Coleman, Coups d’État in Cold War Latin America, 1964–1982 (Cambridge University Press).
Sebastián's project explores the intellectual history of the concept of populism in Latin America, tracing how its meanings have evolved from the 1940s to the present. It examines how the idea of populism has been redefined in relation to authoritarianism, democracy, development, and social change. Understanding the history of the relationship between populism and Latin America offers a unique perspective for addressing contemporary global challenges, both within and beyond South America